Computer systems typically comprise a combination of computer programs and hardware, such as semiconductors, transistors, chips, circuit boards, storage devices, and processors. The computer programs are stored in the storage devices and are executed by the processors.
Computers and other electronic devices are often connected in networks. One such network is the Internet, in which electronic document transfer and message communication such as forums (pages that contain posts submitted by users known as posters), electronic mail (email), and instant messaging are commonplace.
Instant messaging, also known as chat or chat sessions, allows a user at an electronic device to send a message over a network to another user that is concurrently connected to the network. With instant messaging, a user has a contact list that includes the names or identifications of other users with whom communication may be desired in the future. When users identified in the contacts list connect to the network, the user is notified of their presence, so that an interactive chat session may begin if desired. During the interactive chat session, the instant messages between users are immediately (or nearly immediately) routed to the users' electronic devices and displayed on a pop-up window or display area of a display screen. In this way, two or more users may converse with one another in a simulated real-time manner through messages.
Instant messaging differs from other forms of electronic communication, such as email and forum posts in several important ways. First, instant messaging requires that the sender and receiver are concurrently connected to the network, but email and forum posts have no such requirement. Second, email and forum posts require the existence of separate servers (an email server and a page server, respectively), which are computer systems that store the electronic communication for later retrieval. Third, email and forum posts require the receiver to connect to the separate server and retrieve the email or pages of posts, which a receiver either performs periodically (e.g. on a scheduled basis, such as every few minutes), or only in response to an explicit user request, such as a request to retrieve email or download a page of posts. In contrast, an instant messaging client at the receiver need only monitor a port at the receiver for incoming instant messages, so instant messages are received faster and with less receiver processing power than required for email and forum posts.
Some forums provide a service to their registered users that the forum documentation might call an “inbox,” a “private message,” or an “instant message,” but which is actually a forum post that may be retrieved only by a specified intended user or users, as opposed to public forum posts that may be retrieved by all users or all registered users. Forum posts are not true instant messages because the poster may post them to the forum server regardless of whether the specified intended user(s) are online or connected to the forum server, the posts are stored at the forum server and may only be retrieved by the intended user(s) via a time-consuming explicit request to the forum server for a page, and the poster may delete the forum post subsequent to posting it.
The unique features of instant messages (as opposed to email and forum posts, whether public or non-public) provide users with the ability to engage in a near real-time conversation, which is appealing to users.